http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ules-axios
A leaked copy of draft Trump administration legislation shows that the U.S. would abandon fundamental rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO), according to Axios, which obtained the copy of the bill.
The United States Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act would reportedly provide President Trump with the authority to ignore two monumental principles of the WTO and take part in bilateral negotiations with any country.
Navarro seems skeptical that Congress will approve it.
Bloomberg has an article on this, titled "Trump's Ineptitude is No Joke":
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles ... is-no-joke
It’s hard to imagine a better quick story summing up the Donald Trump administration than the one that broke Sunday night about a bill the White House was preparing to, as Jonathan Swan at Axios put it, “declare America’s abandonment of fundamental World Trade Organization rules” by giving the president authority to unilaterally break those rules.
Let’s see …
The policy is nuts; virtually all experts, both in trade and in foreign policy, believe global trade is very good for the U.S.
In fact, according to Swan’s reporting, almost everyone in the White House thinks the bill “is unrealistic or unworkable.”
Why does it exist, then? Because Trump ordered it, and sometimes the best way to mollify a president is to give him what he wants — very slowly, and without anything actually happening. Apparently this thing has been kicking around for months.
The bill has virtually no chance whatsoever of being enacted into law.
The draft bill has a title, the United States Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act, which yields an acronym that had every Twitter wag making fart jokes Sunday night.
It goes on to detail other instances where Trump is a fool or incompetent as president.
The Canadian tariffs are starting:
http://thehill.com/policy/international ... f-us-goods
Canada announced Sunday that it has moved forward with retaliatory measures against U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs, slapping $13 billion in its own tariffs on American exports.
CNN reported that over 40 U.S. steel products will see tariffs of 25 percent. A 10 percent tariff will be levied on more than 80 other American items, including toffee, maple syrup and coffee beans.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... zte-fizzle
Congress's Efforts to Block Trump on Tariffs, China's ZTE Fizzle
U.S. exporters want Congress to rein in President Donald Trump on tariffs, and national security hawks want Congress to force him to put Chinese telecom gear-maker ZTE Corp. out of business.
Good luck with that, trade experts and lobbyists say: Congress is unlikely to stop deferring to Trump anytime soon.
https://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2 ... lling.html
President Trump’s chief economic adviser Lawrence Kudlow has made a career out of being extraordinarily wrong about everything without ever reconsidering his absolute devotion to the supply-side economics dogma that has produced all the wrongness. In the middle of a slavish interview on the Fox Business channel this morning, Kudlow asserted that the economy is:
throwing off [an] enormous amount of new tax revenues. As the economy gears up, more people working, better jobs and careers, those revenues come rolling in, and the deficit, which is one of the other criticisms, is coming down. And it’s coming down rapidly.
The deficit is not coming down rapidly. It’s not coming down at all. It’s rising. The Congressional Budget Office’s new update shows the deficit growing both in absolute terms and as a share of GDP. And the financial press has reported that revenues are falling in the wake of the Trump tax cuts.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles ... -dominance
Trump’s Saturday morning tweet announcing Saudi Arabia would be raising oil output by two million barrels a day surprised everyone, not least Saudi Arabia’s leadership and the president’s own staff. The subsequent walk-back was a hurried, stumbling affair. And the damage was done anyway.
Because, really, nothing says “energy dominance” quite like pretending on social media that an ally will boost their oil production in order to head off the domestic costs of one’s own foreign policy.
The White House finds itself in a quandary of its own making. Having effectively torn up the nuclear deal with Iran and apparently gunning to reduce that country’s oil exports to zero, Trump has teed up a jump in U.S. pump prices timed exquisitely for November’s midterms.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... om-migrant
Families are being charged high fees and forced to deal with various bureaucratic hurdles to transport children from migrant shelters, according to a report from The New York Times.
The publication spoke to various family sponsors trying to obtain the release of migrant children being detained by federal immigration authorities but facing a series of obstacles, including fees of hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... -who-enter
President Trump doubled down Saturday on his demand that people who cross into the U.S. illegally be deported immediately, declaring that American immigration laws are "the dumbest anywhere in the world."
"When people come into our Country illegally, we must IMMEDIATELY escort them back out without going through years of legal maneuvering," Trump tweeted while at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., for the weekend.
...His comments came as tens of thousands of people gathered in Washington, D.C., and cities across the country on Saturday to protest the Trump administration's immigration policies, particularly its "zero tolerance" approach that has led to thousands of migrant children being separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.
No doubt someone has already explained the asylum rules to him, but he counts on his supporters not knowing them:
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil. ... ted-states
Asylum is a protection granted to foreign nationals already in the United States or at the border who meet the international law definition of a “refugee.” The United Nations 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol define a refugee as a person who is unable or unwilling to return to his or her home country, and cannot obtain protection in that country, due to past persecution or a well-founded fear of being persecuted in the future “on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” Congress incorporated this definition into U.S. immigration law in the Refugee Act of 1980.
As a signatory to the 1967 Protocol, and through U.S. immigration law, the United States has legal obligations to provide protection to those who qualify as refugees. The Refugee Act established two paths to obtain refugee status—either from abroad as a resettled refugee or in the United States as an asylum seeker.
Or maybe Trump just likes to pretend he has the power to ignore established laws.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ke-it-easy
President Trump on Sunday blamed his opponents for the division in the country, warning that those who have spoken out against him should “take it easy.” ...“Because some of the language used, some of the words used, even some of the radical ideas, I really think they’re very bad for the country. I think they’re actually dangerous for the country,” he added.
Fox News host Maria Bartiromo then praised Trump’s economic accomplishments, prompting the president to launch into a list of positive statistics about U.S. unemployment.
I'm sure none of the Fox "news" hosts called Trump out for his own tweets and inflammatory remarks. If they wanted to, I'm sure they would have had plenty of footage from the ongoing rallies where he incites his supporters to hate the mainstream media (except Fox) and anyone who opposes Trump.
There seems to be this weird pretense at Fox that liberals are responsible for all the incivility in the country, while conservatives are innocent and pure patriots just trying to save the country. I once read a letter the Republicans sent out to registered Republicans in California before an election and I was fairly shocked at the level of vitriol and spin. You expect a certain amount of "only we can save the country" in those things, but I remember it being beyond that and quite nasty.
btw, I think Senator Duckworth has sense:
http://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk ... sident-not
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) on Sunday said she does not support abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “[ICE] reflects the policies of the White House, of the president,” Duckworth said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “If you abolish ICE now, you still have the same president with the same failed policies,” she said. “Whatever you replace it with is going to still reflect what this president wants to do.”
The Democrats seem amazingly capable of shooting themselves in the foot with stupid ideas, just when many people seem thoroughly fed up with Trump. If ICE doesn't exist, another agency will have to be made, at significant taxpayer expense - it's only a minority of the country that doesn't want some form of control on immigration. Not to mention that if you abolish ICE, Trump gets to set up the new agency.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... nsing-deal
First lady Melania Trump reportedly earned between $100,000 and $1 million in royalties from Getty Images in 2017 for the use of photos that under a licensing could only be used in "positive coverage," according to a report by NBC News.
At least 12 news organizations last year used some of the photos, including Yahoo News, the Daily Mail, Fox News, Condé Nast and the Houston Chronicle.
Several of the news organizations told NBC News that they were not aware that the photos, taken by Belgian photographer Regine Mahaux, were part of a licensing deal that profited the first lady. Several also said they were not aware of the deal that the photos were to be used for positive coverage, and some removed the images after being contacted by NBC.